Does one think in times like that? I don’t know. Only little details stand out in the brain like odd features revealed in a flash of lightning during a storm. I remember putting a drawing-pin into the corner of a Kirchner picture and seeing the headlines of the next day’s paper at home; I saw the faces of my people as they read them. I saw them just coming down to breakfast at the precise moment that I was sticking in the drawing-pin, the door open on to the lawn--in America, still asleep, as they were six hours behind, or possibly only just turning in after a dance--in Etaples, where perhaps the noise had already reached one of them. When would they hear from me again? They would be worrying horribly. The ’phone buzzed. “Brigade, sir!” “Right. Yes?--S.O.S. 3000! _Three_ thousand?--Right! Battery! Drop to _three_ thousand, S.O.S.--Three rounds per gun per minute till I come down.” It was 10 a.m. and that was the range, when according to plan it shouldn’t have come till 10 p.m. at double the range. The subalterns were already out, running down to the guns as I snatched the map and followed after, to hear the battery open fire as I left the hut. The greater significance of this S.O.S. came to me before I’d left the hut. At that range our shells would fall just the other side of Essigny, still a vague blur in the mist. What had happened to the infantry three thousand yards beyond? What had become of the gunners? There were no signs of our people coming back. The country, as far as one could see in the fog, was empty save for the bursting shells which were spread about between Essigny and the railway, with the battery in the barrage. The noise was still so universal that it was impossible to know if any of our guns farther forward were still in action. They couldn’t be if we were firing. It meant--God knew what it meant! The subalterns went on to the guns while I stopped in the control dug into the side of the railway and shed my coat, sweating after the quarter-mile run. Five-nines and pip-squeaks were bursting on the railway and it seemed as if they had the battery taped. To get off my coat was a matter of less than half a minute. It had only just dropped to the ground when the signaller held me the instrument. “Will you speak here, sir?” I took it. “Is that the Major?” “Yes.” “Will you come, sir? Mr. B.’s badly wounded. Sergeant ---- has lost an eye and there’s no one here to----” “Go on firing. I’m coming over.” Badly wounded?